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Interesting, since you mentioned 'small distance warp' I was actually thinking the Torii gates on the Sky Islands could possibly be warp points, either between islands or - for some select ones - some alternate area.
When looking through key art and screenshots all the gates seem to be on the 'edge' of an Island, technically entrances to nowhere. My initial guess was you'd jump off and paraglide through them, but I think simply walking through the gate could be enough to activate traversal.
The patent does describe 'warp points' and has diagrams showing the instantaneous change, in these examples the star symbols are warp points.
FIG. 4 and FIG. 5 show examples of game screens before and after the instantaneous movement. In FIG. 4, the first warp point 103 is displayed obliquely at the right front as seen from the player object 101. Further, the sound source 102 is displayed at a position which is also obliquely at the right front as seen from the player object 101 and is farther than the first warp point 103. In addition, the second warp point 104 is displayed backward of the sound source 102.
Of course it also could be describing a different instant warp system, might even be another arm ability, but using the Torii gates would be fun. I can imagine walking through one and seamlessly ending up in another island, like Portal.
Time to dig into this patent, I will eat up any morsel relating to this game lol